


And Yet...

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Leia Organa, Cassian Andor-centric, F/M, Introspection, One Shot, POV Cassian Andor, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Stand Alone, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 00:11:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18083645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: From the shadows, Cassian watches Leia give a speech, and he wonders if destiny brought them together, or if it was merely a cruel twist of fate.





	And Yet...

Most days, Cassian forgets he’s married a princess. 

Most days, he knows that if she smiles, it is a genuine one, as genuine as his own shy, crooked grin he offers in return. Neither of them are particularly good at smiling, if they’re honest. Then against, neither of them excel at honesty, either. 

Most days, she wears his old shirts and leggings that have patched knees. Her hair is pulled back in a braid, but a simple plait, not the complex whorls of stature and power that had once been required of her. On occasion, she even tucks a few flowers from their garden in its long coils. He likes those days the best, though he’s never told her. He’s not quite sure how to tell her that flowers make him want to cry, but in the best possible way. Then again, maybe he doesn’t need to tell her. Because Leia knows his father used to have a greenhouse and always insisted on planting some flowers, even though to do so was to take away space from the areas meant for crops, because he said to live life without beauty was to live life without hope.

Most days, Cassian knows he has found hope, not in battle plans, not in missions, since the war is over, but in Leia’s smile.

But today, he… he isn’t sure at all what he’s found.

Because Leia is a princess. Because she is all that remains of Alderaan’s splendor. Yes, they’re both survivors from lost planets, but he’s one more ragtag refugee among the masses of Festians struggling to eek out a new life on a different planet, and Leia is… Leia is all of the thousands of years of Alderaan's culture and art and sophistication, condensed into one person. 

And in this moment, he’s all too aware of all of that. 

He’d known this day would come. She’d warned him for weeks now, that she was expected to be at the ceremony honoring the countless lives lost. All the lives lost because Cassian had gotten the Death Star plans too late. All the lives he carried, etched into his own heart, as much as Leia’s own name was. Perhaps they were destined to be together in the end, the man who dedicated himself to the destruction of the Death Star and the woman whose life has been lived in dedication to all those it had destroyed. 

Or perhaps, he thinks as he looks up at her, there on the dias, all in white, as cold and stark as bones, (not like snow, because for him, snow will always be soft, and sweet, and full of the longing for a home he’ll never see again) perhaps, he made a mockery of his destiny, the day he dared to speak to her. 

Because in the end, what right did a spy have to smile at a princess? She, who represented all the goals of the Alliance, should have had nothing to do with a dangerous rebel like him. Together, they truly are that oxymoron of a phrase. The Rebel Alliance. As if rebels ever truly could work together. As if an alliance could ever be more impactful instead of a bunch of bureaucratic red tape.

And yet, they’d worked, so far, hadn’t they? Cassian is filled with an overwhelming yearning to ask her, to check in. To know that yes, this is a good thing. That they, together, are good, even if he’s never sure if he can be again. To hear her say she loves him, and know it to be true, because Leia would never lie to him, not with words like that. 

Instead, he remains silent. Watching. Hands behind his back. Waiting. 

He’s always been waiting and watching, he thinks. He’d never expected to live to see this new galaxy, had been sure he would merely guard the first few sparks of rebellion, then let himself fall into the flames, a cremation that would finally burn away the bloodstains that have soaked so deeply into him. Stains that would never mar any part of Leia, because even when she isn’t dressed in glittering white, she is so bright, so clean, so much of the new dawn, and nothing of the dark, dangerous night that led to all the new light of day.

Cassian loves her for it, even as he worries that he’ll never shine brightly enough to stand at her side. Because even today, he is not at her side. He’s in the crowd, one among many, as he has been for so much of his life. As Leia has never been. Cassian tells himself this is where he belongs. That he needs nothing more. That he’s happy here. That Leia would be happier, too, if her life remained there, high on a dias. Back in the glittering world she came from, and not married to a man working as a part-time mechanic these days, and confined to his bed on others, when the pain from the fall on Scarif is almost too much to bear. 

He’s never told Leia that he thought he would never wake again, after waking that first day, to find himself in a bed, bound tight by white sheets and monitored by a droid that wasn’t Kay, that would never be Kay. He’s never told her that he started to live for her, and not for the Rebellion, the day she came to sit by his side.

He’s never told Leia that she belongs on that dias, and he belongs in her shadow, and therefore, the two can never truly be together. Because life without beauty is without hope, but no beauty deserves to be rendered dull by the harsh life of a one with so little hope left. Cassian tells himself she could do better than him. That she should do better than him.

That perhaps tonight she’ll glide out on that dance floor and into the arms of a kind, intelligent courtier far more suited for a princess.

He even tells himself he’ll be happy for her.

And yet…

And yet…

Cassian swallows, hard. Bites back all the yearning he doesn’t deserve to have. He’s just a mechanic these days. Not even a full-time one, and one that’s far from being the soldier he used to be. His nails are stained with oil, his hands callused and scared. Marked with a life lived hard and dangerous and stubbornly. A life he’d never expected to be this long. They’re the hands of someone who has fought for his life, and won, and now found that the hands, although strong and tough, can’t quite grasp this new thing called happiness. Cassian tells himself that maybe that’s because he doesn’t deserve to. That his hands are better suited for holding a blaster, than a bouquet of flowers. That his fingers are made for lock-picking and not lovers-knot-braiding. That he risks breaking her, each time he touches her.

And yet…

And yet…

She finds him, soon after her speech is over. Finds him, as she always does. With that same intensity, one so bright and bold it might be terrifying, if not for the hope that lies within her. Finds him, and whispers, “you’re here.”

“I said I would be.”

“You didn’t have to come.”

No, he didn’t. Perhaps he would have been happier if he didn't. If he hadn’t been reminded of how much better she fits in among these people, who quote the same poets and dance the same waltzes. Who are made from a type of marble never once hewn on Fest, all of them privileged and powerful and yet so sad. Because the war came even to them. To these rich core worlders, now as homeless as Cassian himself. Because in the end, no one was spared from the destruction of the war. At least not anyone they knew. 

He thinks, maybe, he should say something. Tell her that her speech was lovely, though he can’t remember most of it. Offer her a soft prayer in memory of her parents, except that the only religion he ever learned to pray in is not one followed by anyone else here, or perhaps anyone at all. Whisper to her that she looks lovely, except she already knows that, because she remains perfectly still. When her hair is loosely braided and there are flowers tucked within it, she dances with each breath, runs her fingers through her braid, flows like spring meltwater over stone. When she is made beautiful by a team of makeup artists and designers, then she remains still, an icy mannequin to better display their work.

Cassian thinks, at the very least, he should tell her to go dance with any one of the Alderaanians waiting for her. Thinks that all of them could offer her a better life than the one he’s scraped by on. The only one he can carry, as broken as he is.

And yet…

And yet…

If he’s honest with himself, which he so rarely is, he can’t imagine a life without her, any more than he can imagine a garden without flowers or a galaxy without hope.

Leia takes his hand in hers. She doesn’t notice the dirt or the grease, ignores the scrapes he’d hastily bandaged. Even his calluses from years of firing blasters meet their matches in her own marks of war. They fit together, he thinks, though they shouldn’t. Not at all. Because Leia’s hand is soft and small and fragile, all the things she isn’t, not at all, but all the things she’s needed people to believe she is for so long. No. Leia’s hand is strong, strong enough to sign off on orders that would reduce another commander to tears, strong enough to place on the shoulder of a troop who might not live to see another dawn and offer him comfort, strong enough to fire a blaster when all peaceful diplomacy fails. Leia, Cassian knows, is stronger than anyone believes her to be, and that is why she keeps it hidden. 

He tries to smile at her and she tries to smile back. They’re two broken people, in the end, and yet, they’re two people perfectly made for each other. He’s been back to Fest, only once, and only with her. There, he’d seen flowers bloom in the rubble, and there, he’d learned that hope, too, never really dies. Not even when there’s so little to feed it while it grows. Not even, he thinks, when nothing is left.

It’s Leia who speaks first, and it’s Cassian who truly smiles when she does. She says, “let’s go home. Now.”

Cassian hasn’t had a home in a lifetime. The one he once knew as a boy lies buried beneath rubble and smog and things far heavier than either of those things. The one he had as a soldier is gone too, because Yavin IV is a place for growing things once more, and not a place for war. And Cassian, though he'd been raised by a gardener, knows so little of growing new life and so much of war and taking lives. After that? What home could he have left, when he'd lost so many, sacrificed so much, paid such a high price, and still found himself alone, without, cold, and empty. Cassian tells himself he doesn't deserve a place to call home, not when he'd been unable to bring the others back home from Scarif. Leia’s home? It’s here, if it’s anywhere. Among the people she’d promised to protect, amidst the comforts she grew up with. Here, where she would never be too cold, or too warm. Where every wish she had would be granted, where every whim would be honored. Here, where she could be the princess she should have been, the ruler she could have been, if only he had gotten the plans to her faster. They were never destined to be together, Cassian tells himself. Not if the only thing binding them together is tragedy. Not if what they share, beside their love and their bed, is their heartbreak and their loss. Not if he has offered her so little and she has been raised to want to so much. Not when the only flowers he can pick her would be called weeds by any guest at this banquet, and the only foods he could cook her would be a commoner's meal. All he can offer her is the owrk of his two hands, as scarred and tired and simple as they are. All he can offer her is everything he is, and he knows all too well that is never enough. Has never been enough for anyone else. 

And yet…

And yet…

And yet, flowers still bloom, in untended field or in marble planters. Hope still blossoms, in hearts otherwise hardened. Simple gifts, freely given, mean more than all those fine things offered with gilded chains of obligations. And home... home is a word and it is a place and it is the past. But it is so much more, as well. It is more than a place, and it is so much smaller than many think it to be. It cannot be destroyed, not permanently, not as long as there is hope, or so Leia herself said in her speech to all those assembled around them. Cassian thinks, then, that just maybe, she might be right. He nods at her, at the woman who is impossibly both his wife and his guiding light, his reason to live and his favorite mystery to learn, and says, "yes. If you're sure." 

"With you at my side," Leia says, because she is as much a princess as ever, and speaks as such, just as he watches as a spy does. "I always am." 

The two of them, the spy and the princess, the rebel and the senator, the part-time mechanic and the reluctant figurehead, walk hand in hand back to a home neither of them thought they’d ever be able to find again. A happiness that neither of them would ever be able to grasp alone, and yet one that fits perfectly in the tiny space between their pressed together palms.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been having a really hard time writing fic lately (for a number of reasons) and wanted to see if I could still write my OTP. I'm not sure if anyone's stuck around for this odd little rarepair, but if you have... thank you. They mean the world to me.  
> Comments welcome.


End file.
